Transcript

of

Frederick Willcocks [Obituary]

Maxwell Adams (Ed.).

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  XL, (1908), pp. 46-48.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1908 Newton Abbot meeting. Dr Willcox, who passed away in the same year as his elder brother Edward John, was an eminent physician, with major articles published in Lancet and The Practitioner. He was also extensively cultured and well read. According to his colleagues and friends he was a man with a genial and attractive personality.  The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers..

Frederick Willcocks was the fifth son of the late Mr. Roger Willcocks, of Teignmouth. Born in 1864, Frederick Willcocks was educated at first privately, and at the age of fourteen was sent to Sherborne School, which he left in 1872, being then in the sixth form. Shortly before leaving school he had matriculated at the University of London, and in the following October entered as a medical student at King's College, London, where he gained a "Warneford " entrance scholarship.

In 1874, after having served the office of Demonstrator of Practical Physiology, he was elected a Junior Medical Scholar of King's College, and also passed the Intermediate M.B. examination of the University of London, with honours in physiology. In 1875 he became "Warneford " prizeman and gold medallist and also "Leathes" prize-man, and in the following year  “Tanner " prizeman in midwifery, gaining also prizes for chemistry, pathology, clinical surgery, etc. In 1877 he was elected Senior Medical Scholar and also an Associate of King's College, and qualified and passed as M.R.C.S. and L.S.A.

While a student he identified himself with the many interests that go to make up the best side of the life of a medical school, and, among other things, gained some reputation as a long-distance runner, winning second place in the two-mile race at the United Hospital Sports, 1876.

In 1877-8 he filled the offices of Assistant House Physician and House Physician at King's College Hospital, and in the latter year graduated as M.B. in the University of London, with honours in medicine, obstetric medicine (first-class), and medical jurisprudence (first-class), proceeding to the M.D. degree two years later.

In 1879 he was appointed "Sambrooke" Medical Registrar at King's College Hospital, and held that office for two years, the full period for which it was tenable. During the same period and the year 1881 he was Resident Medical Officer to the Public Dispensary, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

In 1881 he was appointed Physician to Out-patients at the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children, Southwark, and also became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians. In the following year he was elected Medical Registrar, and subsequently, in the same year. Assistant Physician to Charing Cross Hospital.

About the time when he became a member of the medical staff of Charing Cross Hospital, he commenced private practice as a physician at 14 Mandeville Place, W., and was associated there for some years as co-tenant with his old friend, now Sir W. Watson Cheyne, Bart., the eminent surgeon.

During his connection with Charing Cross Hospital and Medical School, which extended over a period of twenty-four years, he held at various times the posts of Lecturer in Botany, Practical Medicine, and Materia Medica and Therapeutics, while for some years the Department for Diseases of the Throat was under his special care. He took also an active interest in the promotion and maintenance of the courses of post-graduate lectures, which were conducted by members of the Medical and Surgical staff of the Hospital, and on several occasions he acted as an Examiner in Materia Medica for the Conjoint Board of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Willcocks, who was a Vice-President of Charing Cross Hospital, was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1893, and in the same year was appointed Physician to the Public Dispensary, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Medical Chirurgical Society, and a Member of the Pathological, Clinical, and Laryngological Societies (being also a Vice-President of the last-mentioned Society), and contributed occasionally to their transactions.

Early in his career - at first in collaboration with his friend the late Dr. E. Buchanan Baxter, F.R.C.P. Professor of Therapeutics at King's College, and after Dr. Baxter's death alone - he conducted a series of clinical investigations on the changes in the blood in various diseases, and the results were published under the titles of "A Contribution to Clinical Hæmometry " (Lancet, March 6, 13, and 20, 1880), “Some Comparative Observations on the Blood in Chlorosis and Pregnancy " {Lancet, 3 Dec, 1881), and " On some Points in the Pathology and Treatment of Chlorotic Anaemia by Iron and Arsenic " (Practitioner, July and August, 1883). Other contributions of his, on various medical subjects, are to be found in the Medical Times and Gazette of the years 1879 and 1880, and in the British Medical Journal for 1880 and later years, and elsewhere.

Besides being eminent in his profession. Dr. Willcocks was also a man of extensive culture and wide and varied reading, and to those who were best acquainted with him a genial and attractive personality. To the sorrow of his many friends his career was cut short in February, 1906, by an attack of paralysis, which necessitated his resigning his appointments and giving up all active professional work. Upon his retirement the governing body of the Evelina Hospital (of which Dr. Willcocks was then a senior physician) appointed him a member of the consulting staff in appreciation of his long and devoted services.

Dr. Willcocks, who was never married, died very suddenly from cerebral hæmorrhage, at the age of fifty-three, on 25 January, 1908, at Burnham, Somerset, where he had resided after leaving London.

He became a life member of the Association in 1881, and contributed two papers to its Transactions, entitled respectively, "The Black Assizes in the West" (1884, Newton Abbot), and "Notes on the Devonshire Colic and its connection with Cider" (1885, Seaton).